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A Behind-The-Scenes Look at the Holloran Center that Provides Guidance to All Law Schools Implementing Professional Identity Formation

By: David A. Grenardo, Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, University of St. Thomas School of Law

Ever since I attended my first Holloran Center Workshop in 2016 and read the powerful materials provided by Neil Hamilton and Jerry Organ, I always wondered how those two operated the Holloran Center. What were they doing at their own law school to implement professional identity since they were the ones giving others ideas of how to do so? What were their personalities like given their considerable influence and impact in legal education?

After joining the University of St. Thomas School of Law and the Holloran Center as its Associate Director this past fall, I can finally answer these questions and share those answers with you. The answers provide an incredible amount of knowledge and wisdom that any law school can use to implement professional identity formation for its students.

Raw Self-Reflection

Professional identity entails continuous self-reflection that allows law students to develop into the professionals they can and want to become. Neil and Jerry strongly encourage this aspect of professional identity for students, and they demonstrate it themselves.

The University of St. Thomas School of Law requires that all 1Ls take three one-credit classes, Moral Reasoning for Lawyers (MRFL), Serving Clients Well, and Business Basics. The concept of professional identity is introduced and reinforced in these courses, particularly MRFL and Serving Clients Well. When St. Thomas Law first introduced some of these ideas, they were included in one three-credit course, Foundations of Justice (Foundations). The three-credit course format was not well received by students. Jerry spearheaded efforts to improve each part of the course, which included commissioning a focus group of students who previously took Foundations to learn what the class did well and not so well. Those conversations resulted in splitting Foundations into two courses— MRFL (one credit) in the fall and Foundations of Justice (two credits) in the spring. Eventually, the two-credit Foundations of Justice course in the spring also was divided and renamed Serving Clients Well (SCW) and Business Basics (BB) to give students exposure to client-service competencies they will need to be successful in practice.

I am now part of this evolutionary process myself as we revisit the design/implementation of the BB course, which I will co-teach with Jerry. Despite being an accomplished and elite teaching professor and scholar, Jerry once again has invited students to share their concerns about the design and content of the course, which has generated some brutal honesty from the students. Jerry has taken the critique and reflected on his own execution and design of the class. We are presently redesigning the class to make it more effective and to engage students where they are.

I also have witnessed Jerry’s and Neil’s honest self-reflection in our weekly Holloran Center meetings where they admit something could have been done better or acknowledge something went well. The vulnerability and candor in which they approach their own self-reflection allow them to truly understand and see where improvements can be made and success has been achieved. This leads to my next observation – they exhibit a growth mindset.

We Will Continuously Try New Things, and When We Fail, Which is Good, We Will Make Them Better

I sometimes feel like I am in the middle of the “Meet the Robinsons” Disney movie when I am working with Neil and Jerry. In that movie, the great inventor, genius, and orphan Lewis goes into the future as a young boy and unknowingly meets his eventual family. As he attempts one of his inventions, it fails horrendously and his future family cheers and congratulates him, “You have failed! From failure we learn, from success. . . not so much.” With Neil and Jerry, there is a humble joy in them when they speak of attempts at implementing professional identity with little or no success. Each of them will say something like, “We tried, but it didn’t work the way we expected or not at all.” They make statements like these without remorse or regret; instead, they do so with humility, pride, and hope. They would probably not call their efforts failures, but instead would likely characterize their attempts as Thomas Edison did, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

They attempt new things knowing that they will not be perfect and actively seek out ways to improve what they have done.

The tinkering and re-jiggering of MRFL, SCW, and BB, led to the inclusion of Roadmap into SCW. Now SCW includes one-on-one coaching of students in January and February of the 1L year using the Roadmap in SCW.

Roadmap, for the uninitiated, is a book written by Neil Hamilton that guides a law student “to prepare and implement a successful plan for meaningful employment.” Neil won the prestigious E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award from the ABA in 2015 based on the Roadmap and his efforts to improve professionalism in the legal profession. Neil is currently finishing up the third edition of the book to make it even more accessible and helpful to law students. The revised Roadmap will be ready for students to utilize this spring in SCW.

Over the last two decades, Jerry and Neil also have played a role in developing and implementing the classroom component associated with the law school’s distinctive Mentor Externship program in which all law students have a mentor for each of their three years in law school. A law student can change mentors during that time, but each law student is guaranteed a mentor throughout every year of law school. This program has also evolved and changed over time to better meet the needs of our students. Presently, in the second year and third year, there is a classroom component with students earning one pass/fail credit in each year. The classroom component involves both small group conversations and also one-on-one coaching with each student three times over the course of the academic year. The Mentor Externship program includes a good deal of professional identity formation, such as self-reflections by the students based on the work they do and their experiences in the program. In addition, each student must develop a networking plan designed to support the individual student’s professional development as reflected in the student’s work with Roadmap.

Neil, through trial and error, even added coaches to his Professional Responsibility course. Now, his class not only teaches the basics of what law students need to understand and apply the rules of professional conduct, but it also explores aspects of professional identity formation as students learn from local practitioners.

Whatever Neil and Jerry do (or try to do), their focus is always on the students—learning about where the students are and searching for the most effective ways to help each student grow. Their thoughtful and creative approach entails a constant loop that involves trying something, seeking feedback, reflecting, improving the exercise, lesson, or class, and then repeating those steps.

Whole-Building Approach

Neil and Jerry have been working for several years towards a whole-building approach to professional identity. They preach it to other law schools, and they are living it out themselves. They have been working diligently to create a “one file” system that allows many departments of the law school to add feedback and notes on each student. The Roadmap coaches from SCW, Mentor Externship professors, the Office of Career & Professional Development (CPD), and Lawyering Skills (aka legal research and writing at some law schools) professors would each add their notes, thoughts, and work relating to professional identity formation into a file for each student so that when faculty or staff meet with students they could see the evolution of the student’s professional identity and the student’s professional development plans over the course of law school.

In particular, Jerry and Neil worked with our law library and IT experts to create a “one file” system that is scheduled to begin operation next semester, starting with the Roadmap and the Roadmap coach observations that will go into that file for each student. Jerry and Neil believe that we will be able to train the 2L and 3L Mentor Externship faculty on how to use the “one file” system by contributing their observations on professional identity formation learning outcomes into an efficient form for gathering insights after each of the six one-on-one meetings that occur throughout the 2L and 3L years. Additionally, notes from the one-on-one meetings with CPD staff will also be added to each student’s file. Neil and Jerry also plan on providing our required curriculum colleagues with some positive and reinforcing language on professional identity to cross-sell the value of these professional identity formation efforts to the students.

Planting Seeds

Jerry and Neil are always anticipating the needs of law students and law schools in the future. They look ahead to try to bridge the gap between what will be needed and what is currently offered. The Holloran Center’s next step will be hosting a symposium/workshop in the spring of 2023 in conjunction with casebook publishers focused on 1L and Professional Responsibility casebook authors (and possibly law professor adopters of those casebooks). It will be the first time the Holloran Center intentionally seeks out casebook authors and 1L/Professional Responsibility professors to convene in a single setting where they can learn, share, and generate ways to help law students develop their own professional identities within these required courses.

Neil and Jerry have done so much amazing work in the legal academy and professional identity formation in particular. I continue to learn from their fearlessness, humility, optimism, and apparent clairvoyance. Even though I was their twentieth choice to serve as Associate Director—I was actually their tenth—I feel honored and humbled to serve alongside them as they continue their phenomenal work.

Please email me at gren2380@stthomas.edu if you have any questions or comments about this post.

December 1, 2022 by hami3258

Neil Hamilton

The Profession Has Core Values the Students Can Explore in Guided Reflection

By: Neil Hamilton, Holloran Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, University of St. Thomas School of Law

Accreditation Standard 303(b) asks legal educators, including faculty and staff, to engage students in “an intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice.” Some legal educators may be asking whether the profession has core values and guiding principles and whether the new standard requires imposing these values and principles on our students. This essay focuses first on what are the core values and guiding principles of the legal profession? The essay then turns to a second question of how most effectively to engage students in an intentional exploration of the core values and guiding principles.

What are the legal profession’s core values and guiding principles?

In my experience, many legal educators have not done an in-depth exploration leading to a clear definition of the core values and guiding principles of our profession. They are in fact living into a set of professional values and guiding principles, but it may be challenging to write them down. The values and principles may seem inchoate initially when written down. This exploration was not part of our law school experience.

Reflecting on my own law school experience many years ago, I remember that the major core value modeled in every course was that I should strive to become a craftsperson of the law, demonstrating the highest level of all the technical skills of being a lawyer, as my professors both modeled and asked me to demonstrate. I don’t remember any discussion or guided reflection on this or other core values.

I think many legal educators today, especially in experiential education, engage students on core professional values and principles, but my experience is that few law schools as a community of practice together have reflected on, discussed, and agreed upon the core values and guiding principles of that school’s community of practice. Standard 303(b) is inviting the faculty and staff of each law school to engage collegially in intentional exploration of that community of practice’s understanding and definition of the core values and guiding principles of the profession.

As a starting place for this collegial intentional exploration of the core values and guiding principles of the profession, the Holloran Center has synthesized a succinct definition from the Preamble to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the four major reports on professionalism from the ABA and the Conference of Chief Justices, and Holloran Center research.[1] There are two foundational core values that law students and lawyers must understand, internalize, and demonstrate:

a deep responsibility and commitment to serving clients, the profession, and the rule of law;
a commitment to pro-active continuous professional development toward excellence at all the competencies needed to serve others well in the profession’s work.

These are the same foundational core values for all of the peer-review professions, such as medicine, nursing, and engineering.[2]

For a longer definition of the profession’s core values and guiding principles, Holloran Center borrowed directly from the Preamble to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, adopted by all 50 states.

Law students and lawyers should understand, internalize, and demonstrate:

a deep responsibility and service orientation to others, especially the client, whom the student serves in widening circles as the student matures including a commitment to:

- zealously protecting and pursuing a client’s interests within the bounds of the law while demonstrating respect for the legal system and a courteous and civil attitude toward all persons involved in the legal system;
- improving the law, providing pro bono service to the disadvantaged, developing cultural competence, and promoting a justice system that provides equal access and eliminates bias, discrimination, and racism in the law;[i]
- developing and being guided by personal conscience—including the exercise of “sensitive professional and moral judgment” and the conduct of an “ethical person”—when deciding all the “difficult issues of professional discretion” that arise in the practice of law; and
- developing independent professional judgment, including moral and ethical considerations, to help the client think through decisions that affect others;

pro-active continuous professional development toward excellence at all the competencies needed to serve others in the profession’s work well; and
compliance with the minimum standards of competency and ethical conduct in the Rules of Professional Conduct.

How do we most effectively engage students in an intentional exploration of these core values and guiding principles?

New Interpretation 303-5 emphasizes two of the most important curricular principles to engage students in an intentional exploration of these core values and guiding principles.

Each student should have frequent opportunities for reflection on these core values and principles in courses and co-curricular and professional development activities; and
Each student’s growth toward later stages of development regarding these core values and guiding principles will occur over time.

My earlier blog post on the Standard 303 revisions emphasized that the new standards require law schools to move toward a coordinated progression of guided reflection modules in the curriculum to foster each student’s growth in exploring these core values and principles.

Law Student Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals (2022) outlines eight additional curricular principles that will foster each student’s exploration of these core values and principles.

The core values and principles discussed in this document come directly from the legal profession’s own rules of conduct, studies conducted of lawyers, and extensive research regarding the values and principles exhibited in the legal profession. It is important to understand that professional identity formation does not involve legal educators “instilling” or “inculcating” these core values and principles into students. Rather, professional identity formation entails explicitly and intentionally identifying and sharing these values and principles with law students. Each student then engages in an exploration of and guided reflection upon the core values and guiding principles of the profession that lead to successful legal practice. It is a life-long exploration for each lawyer.

If you have any questions or comments about this post, then please contact me at NWHAMILTON@stthomas.edu.

Neil Hamilton is the Holloran Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota.

[1] See William Sullivan et al, EDUCATING LAWYERS: PREPARATION FOR THE PROFESSION OF LAW 128-40 (2007); Neil Hamilton, Professionalism Clearly Defined, 18 THE PROF. LAWYER 4-20 (No. 4, 2008); Neil Hamilton, Assessing Professionalism: Measuring Progress in the Formation of an Ethical Professional Identity, 5 U. ST. THOMAS L.J. 470,482-83 (2008); Neil Hamilton, Fostering Professional Formation (Professionalism): Lessons From Carnegie Foundation’s Five Studies on Educating Professionals, 45 CREIGHTON L.R. 763-97 (2012).

[2] See Neil Hamilton, The Core Values of the Service Professions and an Effective Curriculum to Help Students Internalize Them, in EDUCATING ETHICS ACROSS THE PROFESSIONS: A COMPENDIUM OF RESEARCH, THEORY, PRACTICE, AND AN AGENDA FOR THE FUTURE (R. Jacobs ed., 2022).

[3] Note that new interpretation 303-6 provides that the core values and responsibilities of the profession should include the importance of cross-cultural competence and the obligation of lawyers to promote a justice system that provides equal access and eliminates bias, discrimination, and racism in the law.

November 22, 2022 by hami3258

Janet Stearns

Teaching “Reflection & Growth” Through Mindfulness

By: Janet Stearns, Dean of Students, University of Miami School of Law

In this past year, I enjoyed some significant opportunities to advocate, negotiate, and study the new ABA standards. I return often to the text and context of the Standards and interpretations and consider how this language is challenging us in our critical roles in law schools today. In review, the comment to Standard 303 guides us:

The development of professional identity should involve an intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice. Because developing a professional identity requires reflection and growth over time, students should have frequent opportunities for such development during each year of law school and in a variety of courses and co-curricular and professional development activities.(emphasis added).

How do we teach the foundational skills of ‘reflection and growth” as part of well-being practices in law school? One very significant contribution to answering this question is through the teaching of Mindfulness in law schools.

My colleague and friend Professor Scott Rogers has written a fabulous and important resource—The Mindful Law Student: A Mindfulness in Law Practice Guide. Scott serves as Lecturer in Law and Director of University of Miami School of Law’s Mindfulness in Law Program and Co-Director of the University of Miami’s Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative. Scott is also a co-president of the national non-profit Mindfulness in Law Society. Scott has spent more than a decade collaborating on peer-reviewed neuroscience research assessing the efficacy of mindfulness training and shares a series of core practices that have been part of this research and are among those found in many well-respected mindfulness training programs. This Practice Guide was published in September by Edward Elgar publishing and is thus a very new tool in our toolbox for teaching mindfulness.

Overview: The Mindful Law Student

The Mindful Law Student is both profound and concise. The materials build upon Scott’s teaching at the University of Miami for the past 15 years. I have been blessed to have a “front row seat” and observe the evolution of Scott’s teaching from his first arrival at Miami Law. Having seen and heard many of his presentations over this time, I was tremendously impressed by Scott’s ability to pull together this complex body of work into such a focused and readable text.

The book is divided into three parts, each consisting of 5 chapters. The first part is called “Mindfulness Elements” and includes a discussion of Leadership, Attention, Relaxation, Awareness, and Mindfulness. This material is foundational and elucidates the relevance of this topic to every aspect of our personal and professional lives. Part II is “Mindfulness and You” and features specific strategies relating to Solitude, Connection, Self-Care, Movement, and Practice. As Scott tells us:

The chapters in Part II can be read in any order, and you may find them to be useful interludes that complement the readings in Part I.

(I will admit that I read them “in order” the first time but see the opportunities to return to them in different orders, and that this would be welcoming to students.)

Part III, Mindfulness Integrations, raises our awareness of the ways that Mindfulness can affect our lawyering in the areas of Listening, Negotiation, Judgment, Creativity, and Freedom. This section included some very significant “aha” moments for me. For example, in Chapter 11 on Listening, Scott talks about the tendency of lawyers (and physicians) to interrupt their clients and patients. He then offers very specific guidance on how to transition to a mindful listener. Chapter 12 on Negotiation highlights the value of mindful attention to understand better our counterparties and moving beyond self-centered thinking to productive negotiation strategies. Returning to our main theme of professional identity, Part III makes clear the integral role of a mindfulness and reflective practice in performing key elements of our work as lawyers.

Some Special Gems in The Mindful Law Student

Each chapter skillfully integrates scholarship and key teachings on Mindfulness with elements that make this particularly accessible to law students. For one, Scott features seven fictional, diverse law students who face academic and professional challenges and find a pathway for Mindfulness to assist each of them. Each chapter also includes some insightful visualizations and images that capture main concepts. As a visual learner myself, I find these images particularly captivating. Scott is most adept with his key “metaphors”—a reader of the book will quickly understand the images of the flashlight (of attention), the snow globe (of life’s confusing moments), the lightbulb (for awareness), and the spirals (of over-reaction). These images return throughout the book.

Most chapters introduce readers to a different mindfulness practice that connects to that chapter’s subject matter. A website for the book offers a series of 6-, 12-, and 18-minute versions of each practice, which students can also access via a free app. Scott provides access to practice scripts for those faculty who may wish to offer live guidance in class.

The text skillfully integrates the teachings of many great thinkers, from Rumi and Buddhist devotees to musicians like Herbie Hancock and Supertramp, from civil rights leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois to contemporary lawyers and judges who practice mindfulness.

The Mindful Law Student includes specific exercises and probing questions for meditation and self-reflection at the end of each chapter. Mindfulness requires practice and this is a practice guide. Each chapter also highlights key Trials and Takeaways, which are summaries of main concepts and areas for future work. Finally, each chapter has a concise but helpful list of references and resources for those who might want to dig deeper into any subject.

Chapter 14, “Creativity,” challenges the reader to connect with one’s creative soul through art and poetry. I felt the need to accept that challenge and take the “first step” on that “journey of a thousand miles.” The text discusses the Haiku structure, composed of three-line stanzas of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. I took the plunge, and so here I share my first mindful Haiku with you, inviting our readers to consider your own creative endeavors.

Haiku #1

Powerful Law profs

Changing the world mind by mind

Moment by moment

Guiding law students

Capable of breath, thoughts, dreams

The key: mindfulness

Reflective lawyers

Navigating this world with

Equanimity

Strategies for Using The Mindful Law Student

This Practice Guide can be integrated in a number of productive ways into the law school experience of teaching professional identity. Some options might include:

-A stand-alone course on Mindfulness. The fifteen chapters would be a successful outline of a weekly course dedicated to exploring the practice and applications of Mindfulness in the Law.

-The book, at just over 200 pages, could be on a recommended summer reading list for new law students, and then form the basis for well-being and orientation programming.

-The sections of the text that focus on listening, negotiation, judgment (and ethics), leadership, and creativity could be part of courses that focus on these particular skills, or included in law clinics, externships, or other experiential learning classes where these skills are taught.

As we explore new curricular options and models around professional identity in 1L and upper-level courses, consider whether The Mindful Law Student would be an appropriate addition to your curriculum.

For More Information:

Contact Elgar Publishing for a copy of The Mindful Law Student so that you can consider strategies for integrating this practice guide into your professional identity teaching.

www.themindfullawstudent.com

Other useful resources include:

Mindfulness in Law Society website:
https://www.mindfulnessinlawsociety.org/

UMindfulness at the University of Miami
https://umindfulness.as.miami.edu/

Mindfulness in Law Program at the University of Miami School of Law
https://www.law.miami.edu/academics/programs/mindfulness/index.html

Please feel free to reach out to me at jstearns@law.miami.edu if you have any questions or comments.

Janet Stearns is Dean of Students at the University of Miami School of Law and Chair of the ABA COLAP Law School Committee.

November 17, 2022 by hami3258

Barbara Glesner FInes

Three Shifts in Thinking for Professional Identity Formation

By: Barbara Glesner Fines, Dean and Rubey M. Hulen Professor of Law, UMKC School of Law

To help students through the professional identity formation process, and to fulfill the ABA accreditation standard, we as faculty members will need to shift our thinking about what it means to educate law students. Three aspects of this process will require us to develop new competencies as educators.

Professional identity formation requires us to shift our stance from teacher to mentor/coach

The primary pedagogies for guiding students through the socialization process require faculty to engage students in reflection on their observations and experiences, and provide coaching and feedback on those reflections and the students’ plans for further development. Conversation, as opposed to lecture or simulation, becomes the primary vehicle for this coaching and mentoring. A far more personal and individualized approach to students is required to effectively guide students through formation. This approach entails sharing control of learning with students rather than viewing our primary role as directing that learning. We will not fully capture or guide the formation process unless we recognize that much of this process will be outside of our control; in fact, to be effective, it must be outside of our control. To develop into self-directed lifelong learners (one central part of an attorney’s professional identity) students must be empowered to make choices about (1) finding opportunities for observation and experiences, (2) methods of reflection, and (3) seeking feedback on those experiences.

Professional identity formation requires us to shift our perception of where learning takes place

Law faculty spend a great deal of time focusing on the learning that occurs in the classroom and the clinic during the academic year. However, students form their perceptions of what it means to be a lawyer from all aspects of their experiences during law school. They learn about the role of professional peer relationships in their study groups, activities, and student organizations. They learn about the relationships of attorneys to other professionals by observing the interactions between faculty and staff or between attorneys in the community and other professionals. In so many other ways, professional formation takes place in the parts of the law school experience that have been characterized as the “hidden curriculum.”[1] For faculty to effectively and intentionally guide students in their professional formation, we must recognize the opportunities for formative experiences that we otherwise think of as “outside” and “other.” We can encourage students to seek these out and reflect on how these experiences have shaped their conception of themselves as attorneys.

Professional identity formation requires faculty to work together in building a meaningful program

The students’ experience-reflection-coaching cycle must occur over time and across activities. As the ABA Interpretation 303-5 comments, “developing a professional identity requires reflection and growth over time . . . in a variety of courses and co-curricular and professional development activities.” Moreover, the process will necessarily be highly individualized, as each law student must not only develop themselves as professionals, but they must also integrate that identity into the many other identities that they carry. Law faculty do not often approach their teaching (or research for that matter) as collaborations but as independent roles.[2] Professional identity formation requires that we recognize that our work with individual students will be layered upon and integrated with the work of our colleagues. That means we must work toward regular conversations and collaborations among the faculty about that work. Rather than thinking about ourselves as individual faculty members guiding our group of students (one to many), we must work as a collective to build programs that guide each individual student on their separate journey (many to one).

Please email me at bglesnerfines@umkc.edu if you have any questions or comments about this post.

Barbara Glesner Fines is the Dean and Rubey M. Hulen Professor of Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.

[1] David M. Moss, The Hidden Curriculum of Legal Education: Toward a Holistic Model for Reform, 2013 J. Disp. Resol. 19, 22 (attributing the concept to sociologist Philip Jackson).

[2] Christine Cerniglia Brown, Professional Identity Formation: Working Backwards to Move the Profession Forward, 61 Loy. L. Rev. 313, 318 (2015) (stating that “thoughtful curricular design highlights core values essential to professional identity formation; however, such a design requires a substantial amount of planning and collaboration among colleagues who may have different viewpoints”).

November 15, 2022 by hami3258

David Grenardo

Required Reading: Imposter Syndrome in the Legal Profession and an Exercise for Law Students

By: David A. Grenardo, Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, University of St. Thomas School of Law

Professional identity formation, which involves teaching law students to recognize their responsibility to others, particularly clients, and encouraging students to develop the professional competencies of a practicing lawyer, has gained considerable prominence in the legal academy. The ABA revised its standards to require that all law schools provide substantial opportunities for law students to develop their professional identity.

Professional identity formation relies on students to identify the professional competencies they excel in currently and the competencies in which they need to improve, and they must work to develop those competencies. Part of that process requires an accurate self-understanding of who law students are. The imposter syndrome serves as a sinister force that threatens a law student’s ability to develop her professional identity and to succeed as a lawyer. The pervasiveness and negative effects of the imposter syndrome warrant that as law schools incorporate professional identity formation into their curriculum, they should address imposter syndrome with their students.

The University of Dayton Law Review recently published an article on imposter syndrome. Part I of the article briefly discusses professional identity and how it requires self-reflection and self-awareness. Part II explains imposter syndrome in general, and Part III examines imposter syndrome and its prevalence in the legal profession. Part IV provides practical, tangible ways for law schools, professors, and law students to tackle imposter syndrome. The article concludes that law schools should help law students facing imposter syndrome overcome it.

That fourteen-page article on imposter syndrome became part of the required readings for all 1Ls in a class I teach at the University of St. Thomas School of Law called Moral Reasoning for Lawyers, which introduces students to the concept of professional identity formation. The class is taught the week prior to the beginning of the fall semester for all law students.

Not only can law schools include this article in classes regarding professional identity formation, but they can also incorporate the article into any class. I did an exercise in my Contracts and Business Associations classes last year with the article. I posted the article on Canvas under Discussions with the following prompt:

“Please read the attached short law review article on the issue of imposter syndrome in law school and the legal profession.

Discuss any aspect of the article that stood out to you.

Click the reply button below to begin your post and also reply to at least two other posts.”

When I created the Discussion in Canvas, I checked the following boxes:

Canvas Selection Options for Discussions

One of the ways to help law students surmount imposter syndrome is to share their feelings about it with others, and I was blown away by the honesty, sincerity, and empathy that students demonstrated with the exercise when they shared their experiences and feelings with each other about imposter syndrome.

Since students could not see any posts before they published their first post, students who admitted they suffered from imposter syndrome in their initial post (which constituted an overwhelming majority of the students) often expressed relief, comradery, and bewilderment when they were able to read and post about how many of their classmates similarly revealed their own struggles with imposter syndrome.

The discussion consisted exclusively of understanding and encouraging posts. I recognize that the students knew I would be reading their posts, but the genuinely caring posts to and about each other went beyond my hopeful expectations for the exercise. Perhaps law students are more comfortable with sharing their feelings in e-discussions these days. Whatever the reason for the wonderful and community-building discussion, it served as a powerful exercise for the students.

Whether you decide to integrate imposter syndrome into the curriculum through a class (professional identity formation or otherwise), student and/or professor panels, or some other measure, all law schools should raise this issue to help law students conquer imposter syndrome.

Should you have any questions or comments about this post, please email me at gren2380@stthomas.edu.

David Grenardo is a Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

November 3, 2022 by hami3258

Jordan Furlong

Competence Starter Kit

By: Jordan Furlong, Canadian Legal Sector Analyst, Forecaster, Speaker, and Consultant

In a previous post, I discussed how the Law Society of British Columbia (the regulator of lawyers and legal services in the province of B.C.) asked me to suggest reforms to its lawyer licensing system. In my 82-page report submitted in May 2022, I recommended that B.C. create a competence framework for entry-level fitness to practice law and design a competence-based licensing system based on that framework. In September 2022, the Law Society accepted that recommendation.

In my report, I was reluctant to give the Law Society my opinion on the proper constituent elements of entry-level competence in their province. That decision has to be made by experts with much more experience and proficiency than me, in consultation with a very wide group of stakeholders.

But I was invited to consider that there would be value in suggesting a sort of “starter kit” of competencies in a suggested framework, in order to guide the earliest stages of the consultation process and give the directors a sense of what such a framework might look like. After extensive research and reflection, I came up with the following:

Knowledge of the Law

- Administrative law and procedure
- Business and corporate law and procedure
- Civil litigation, procedure, and remedies
- Contract law and drafting
- Constitutional law
- Criminal law, procedure, and sentencing
- Evidence
- Family law and procedure
- Legislative, regulatory, and judicial systems
- Property and tenancy law and procedure
- Torts
- Wills, estates, and trust law and procedure

Understanding of a Lawyer’s Professional Responsibilities

- Client confidentiality
- Client trust accounts
- Conflicts of interest
- Fiduciary duties
- Select other aspects of the Code of Professional Conduct

The Skills of a Lawyer

- Gather relevant facts through interviews and research
- Carry out legal research
- Conduct due diligence
- Draft essential legal documents
- Solve problems using legal knowledge and analysis
- Help negotiate solutions and resolve disputes
- Advocate for a client’s position
- Provide legal advice to clients
- Use law practice technology
- Fulfill the basic business and professional requirements of a private law practice

The Skills of a Professional

- Establish, maintain, and conclude a client relationship
- Establish and maintain respectful and collaborative relationships with colleagues and others
- Communicate accurately and concisely, verbally and in writing, to different audiences
- Understand and use information management systems effectively
- Understand and use financial management systems effectively
- Manage projects and responsibilities to ensure they are completed efficiently, on time, and to an appropriate professional standard
- Organize one’s time and activities to ensure the prompt and successful fulfilment of one’s obligations.

This starter kit can serve as a useful tool for regulators in Canada and, hopefully, the United States, as well as law schools across the continents, in determining what competencies every first-year lawyer should possess.

For an example of what a competence framework for lawyer development and licensing might look like, check out the Building a Better Bar project at the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, and of course, the Roadmap for Employment at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. Also, Professors Neil Hamilton and Jerry Organ have done extensive and fantastic work on professional competence development and professional identity formation.

If you have any questions or comments about this post, then please email me at jordan@law21.ca.

Jordan Furlong is a Canadian Legal Sector Analyst, Forecaster, Speaker, and Consultant.

October 27, 2022 by hami3258

Jordan Furlong

Coming Soon: A Competence-Based Approach to Law Licensure

By: Jordan Furlong, Canadian Legal Sector Analyst, Forecaster, Speaker, and Consultant

Nobody is happy with the bar exam, and nobody should be. Licensure candidates who borrow and spend heavily and study for years to earn a law degree have to hit the books again, immediately after graduation, to prepare for a much tougher set of legal knowledge tests whose results actually matter.

Scarcely more than two-thirds of all candidates pass the bar exam, with failure rates especially high among repeat test-takers and members of racialized communities. And nobody has ever established a link between bar exam passage and competence to practice law.

Even the organization that sets the bar exam admits the current version needs to be improved, although the NCBE doesn’t intend to introduce a revamped version until 2026. And if you’re not aware of the serious issues with how the bar exam is executed in practice, go to Twitter and search for the hashtag #barpocalypse. Prepare to be appalled.

The whole situation needs improvement, and every day more people find themselves asking, “Is this really the best we can do? Isn’t there any other way to determine if a person is competent to be admitted to practice law?” As a matter of fact, there is — and a recent development in Canada, to which I’ve contributed, might have brought us a little closer to that better way becoming reality in the United States. That better way, competence-based licensure, represents the future of bar admission.

In our current system, a candidate acquires knowledge-based credentials from a third party (a law school and a board of bar examiners), and regulators accept those credentials as a proxy for readiness to practice law. Nobody directly assesses whether the candidate is actually competent to practice law, in terms of their knowledge, skills, attributes, and experiences. As a result, successful candidates enter the profession plagued by impostor syndrome, while unsuccessful candidates are left to wonder why they fell short.

In a competence-based law licensing system, by contrast, the regulator identifies the precise knowledge, skills, attributes, and experiences that a candidate must possess in order to be minimally competent to practice law, and it creates an accessible process through which candidates can prove to the regulator that they possess those competencies.

In a competence-based licensure system, everyone knows what’s required of a new lawyer, and anyone can acquire and demonstrate possession of those attributes. It’s a far more equitable, rational, defensible, and transparent licensing system. And it’s already been proven to work.

The Solicitors’ Regulation Authority of England & Wales was the first regulator to introduce a competence-based licensing system a few years ago. The SRA, following a lengthy and comprehensive period of study and consultation, identified the essential knowledge and the core competencies of a “Day One” solicitor, as well as the level of proficiency required of each competency at the point of professional entry.

These “competence statements” from the professional regulator then formed the basis of two challenging sets of entrance exams (one for knowledge, the other for practice skills). Combined with a two-year apprenticeship requirement, they replaced all previous requirements for entry to the solicitor profession in England and Wales.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the SRA’s switch to a competence-based systems is this: a law degree is no longer required in order to become a lawyer. The SRA reasoned that if a candidate could pass its difficult entrance exams, that candidate clearly possessed the legal knowledge and skills to be a lawyer.

Crucially, the SRA does not care how a candidate acquires that knowledge and skill. Unlike regulators in the United States, it does not require a licensure candidate to acquire two very similar sets of knowledge credentials. It only cares that the candidate can demonstrate to the regulator possession of the core competencies of entry-point practice. The regulator encourages candidates to acquire that ability in any number of ways.

Competence-based licensure has also emerged as part of the bar admission system in parts of Canada over the past few years. Four Canadian provinces use an entirely skills-based bar admission course called the Practice Readiness Education Program (PREP), which is based on an innovative skills-oriented competence framework. And just last year, the province of New Brunswick introduced a detailed competency profile to accompany its new bar admission program.

This was the context in which the Law Society of British Columbia (the regulator of lawyers and legal services in the province of B.C.) asked me last year to suggest reforms to its own lawyer licensing system. The Law Society of B.C. was familiar with my 2020 report and recommendations to the neighboring Law Society of Alberta, “Lawyer Licensing and Competence in Alberta,” which touched on several similar topics. My 82-page report, submitted in May 2022, recommended that B.C. create a competence framework for entry-level fitness to practice law and design a competence-based licensing system based on that framework. In September, the Law Society accepted that recommendation.

The system I recommended for B.C. most closely resembles the SRA’s approach in England & Wales. I suggested that the Law Society engage in extensive consultations with myriad stakeholders in the legal sector — not just lawyers — to determine the essential knowledge, skills, attributes, and experiences that reflect what a member of the public had a right to expect from a lawyer on their first day in practice.

But I also warned against making that competence framework a “wish list” of ideal lawyer attributes, specifying hundreds of different competencies that candidates must acquire and proficiently demonstrate for licensure. “Day One” competence, while it must meet minimum standards, should not be any higher than that; otherwise, you’re just creating (another) barrier to professional entry. In a separate and upcoming post, I will share my suggested “starter kit” of competencies that new lawyers should posses.

Beyond that core recommendation, I made several other non-binding suggestions to the Law Society, including the hot-button idea of dropping the law degree requirement, introducing new instruction in professional responsibility and professional awareness, and making major reforms to the “supervised practice” requirement that all Canadian law licensure candidates must fulfill before bar admission. The Law Society of B.C. has left decisions on all these points to a specially appointed task force.

It will still be several years before the first cohort of lawyers licensed through a competence-based system enters the British Columbia legal profession. Designing a competence framework for lawyers is a major undertaking, all the more challenging given the rapid shifts in our profession and society. Building a licensing process around that framework is another huge job. This is going to take a while.

But it should also change, for the better, the process by which people in B.C. become lawyers. By abandoning an archaic and opaque credentials-based system, and embracing a modern and transparent competence-based system, the Law Society of B.C. will increase public and professional confidence in the ability of lawyers to do their jobs from Day One. It will bring lawyer licensing into line with other professions’ admission systems and go a long way towards defeating “impostor syndrome” among new lawyers.

My sincere hope is that my report dovetails with the existing and burgeoning efforts in other jurisdictions (especially Oregon), so that our profession will one day boast a lawyer licensing system based not on a series of inadequate and exclusionary proxies, but on demonstrated competence to practice law. The public in general, and our clients in particular, deserve at least that much from our profession.

Should you have any question or comments about this post, please feel free to contact me at jordan@law21.ca.

Jordan Furlong is a Canadian Legal Sector Analyst, Forecaster, Speaker, and Consultant.

October 25, 2022 by hami3258

Neil Hamilton

The Standard 303 Revisions Require a Developmental Sequence of Modules in the Curriculum

By: Neil Hamilton, Holloran Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, University of St. Thomas School of Law

The Standard 303 revisions require each law school, over time, to move toward a developmental sequence of modules fostering student reflection and growth regarding professional identity.

New Standard 303(b)(3) requires that “a law school shall provide substantial opportunities to students for the development of a professional identity.” (emphasis added regarding the developmental nature of professional identity and the number of opportunities).
New Interpretation 303-5 defines professional identity. “Professional identity focuses on what it means to be a lawyer and the special obligations lawyers have to their clients and society. The development of a professional identity should involve an intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice.” (emphasis added regarding the developmental nature of professional identity).
New Interpretation 303-5 continues, “Because developing a professional identity requires reflection and growth over time, students should have frequent opportunities for such development during each year of law school and in a variety of courses and co-curricular and professional development” (emphasis added regarding the developmental nature of professional identity and the number of opportunities).

The Standard 303 revisions clearly require each law school to create a developmental sequence of opportunities for reflection and growth over time so that each student explores and internalizes the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice. This developmental sequence of opportunities to foster each student’s professional identity requires coordination and progression among the modules.

The empirical research on professional identity formation strongly supports guided reflection in one-on-one coaching (especially in the context of authentic professional experiences) as the most effective curriculum to foster this type of student growth. The one-on-one coaching engagements also provide some basis for expert observation necessary for program assessment of our professional identity learning outcomes. There is no empirical evidence that doctrinal coverage and analysis of professional identity topics without guided reflection will make any difference with respect to student development.

New Standard 303(c) requires that a law school shall provide education on cross-cultural competency, equal access, and the elimination of bias, discrimination, and racism at the start of the program of legal education and at least once again before graduation.
New Interpretation 303-6 states that these same values should be included in the Professional Responsibility course.
Since the definition of “professional identity” in Interpretation 303-5 focuses on what it means to be a lawyer and the special obligations lawyers have to their clients and society, and the Interpretation also provides that professional identity development should involve an intentional exploration of the values of the profession, it seems reasonable that the values of cross-cultural competency, equal access, and the elimination of bias, discrimination, and racism should be included in the developmental sequence of opportunities for reflection and growth over time so that each student explores and internalizes them. Again, this developmental sequence of opportunities to foster each student’s professional identity requires coordination and progression among the modules.

It may be that the common committee structure for law school faculties will not be effective to foster this type of change in the curriculum. Curriculum Committees, in my experience, are responsive to proposals for individual courses, and are not generally pro-active in generating coordinated modules across the curriculum. A Curriculum Reform Task Force might contribute initially to this type of coordination, but again, my experience is that the reports of this type of task force end up in a type of “graveyard” with other past curriculum reform task force reports. The type of coordinated change envisioned here is going to take ten to twenty years – one small step at a time. I think the most effective answer is a pro-active Coordinated Standard 303 Modules Committee with membership from all the staff and faculty functions that affect student professional identity formation.

If you have any questions or comments about this post, then please contact me at NWHAMILTON@stthomas.edu.

Neil Hamilton is the Holloran Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota.

October 20, 2022 by hami3258

Eric Goldman, Laura Norris

Successful Outcomes from Santa Clara Law’s Tech Edge JD Experiment

By: Laura Norris, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Clinical Professor, Director of the Tech Edge J.D., Co-Director of the High Tech Law Institute,
Santa Clara University School of Law

Eric Goldman, Associate Dean of Research, Professor of Law, Co-Director of the High Tech Law Institute, Santa Clara University School of Law

In 2018, Santa Clara Law launched an important new program called the Tech Edge JD (TEJD). It is a certificate for JD students with several design features centered around skill-building and professional identity formation. TEJD requires students to complete a series of milestones to give them the experiences employers expect Silicon Valley professionals to have. TEJD students get support from a faculty/staff advisor, two practitioner mentors, and the entire TEJD community.

TEJD has achieved some remarkable outcomes in its first four years. This blog post highlights three: improved admissions yield while increasing incoming LSAT score, increased racial diversity, and improved employment outcomes.

Incoming students apply to TEJD at the same time they apply to law school. Admission is discretionary based on supplemental essays and a video interview. LSAT/GPA isn’t part of the TEJD admissions criteria, but TEJD cohorts nevertheless have higher LSATs than their overall Santa Clara Law classes.

Despite the higher LSAT scores of incoming TEJD students, their yield has been 11-29% higher than the school’s overall admissions yield. This indicates that TEJD helps the law school compete for students with more choices.

Santa Clara Law is already a racially diverse law school, but TEJD has outperformed the law school’s racial diversity rates. This enhanced diversity may reflect the downplaying of LSAT/GPA in TEJD admissions decisions.

Though TEJD requires students to spend substantial time on activities outside the classroom to complete their milestones, this has not come at the expense of academic achievement. TEJD students have higher law school GPAs than the overall class, even on an LSAC-adjusted basis.

TEJD students have also had improved employment outcomes. The first cohort (graduating class of 2021) had 100% employment their 1L summer (most paid, some externships). That cohort had 80% employment on graduation (+40% compared to overall Santa Clara Law grads) and 100% employment 10 months later (+18%).

We think TEJD represents an important innovation in legal education with many potential lessons for the legal education industry. Our paper, “How Santa Clara Law’s “Tech Edge JD” Program Improves the School’s Admissions Yield, Diversity, & Employment Outcomes,” spills all of the details, including how the TEJD program is designed and what we think worked and what didn’t. The article also does the following: identifies what we think are the keys to TEJD’s success; discusses students’ self-identification during the application process, the pre-orientation TEJD orientation, and students’ professional identity formation early in their law school careers; and describes the extensive advisor/mentor support. The features of TEJD can be easily adopted by other schools, with or without replicating TEJD.

Should you have any questions about the TEJD program or if you would like to discuss how your school can adopt the program (or aspects of it), then please contact Dean Goldman at egoldman@gmail.com or Dean Norris at lnorris@scu.edu.

Laura Norris is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Clinical Professor, Director of the Tech Edge J.D., and Co-Director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law.

Eric Goldman is the Associate Dean of Research, Professor of Law, and Co-Director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law

October 18, 2022 by hami3258

Sarah Beznoska

Professional Identity Formation and First-Generation Law Students

By: Sarah Dylag Beznoska, Assistant Dean for Student and Career Services,
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University

It comes as no surprise to those of us who work with law students on first destinations and career paths that when the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) studied national employment statistics for the graduating class of 2020, it found that whether or not you are a first-generation law student impacts your career outcomes in the law.

NALP reported: “Overall, Class of 2020 continuing-generation JD students (graduates who have at least one parent or guardian with a JD degree) and continuing-generation college students (graduates who have at least one parent or guardian with a bachelor’s degree or higher, but whose parents/guardians all lack a JD degree) had a higher employment rate and were more likely to be employed in a bar passage required/anticipated job than their first-generation college student peers.”

The Law Student Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) also consistently highlights important disparities related to first-generation law students. From LSSSE, we know that first-generation law students bear more law school debt and face significant stressors related to debt. We know that “the amount of time that first-generation law students [spend] with peers and faculty outside of class [is] significantly less than non-first-generation law students.” LSSSE data has shown that first-generation students also participate in co-curricular opportunities at a lower rate that non-first-generation students, spend more time studying, and spend more time working to support themselves.

This data should be important to everyone in the legal industry, especially as we talk about diversifying our workplaces and our leadership. It is particularly important to me as someone who works in career services at an urban law school that serves a significant population of first-generation college and law students. To provide the best student and career services to our students, we are continually assessing our work through the viewpoint of first-generation students and making adjustments to provide better support.

This assessment can be done for professional identity formation (PIF) too. Understanding and accounting for the unique experiences noted above is critical to developing any comprehensive PIF plan. On the positive side of things, schools can leverage PIF to build belonging for first-generation students. At the same time, being mindful about the time constraints sometimes faced by first-generation students might inform the methods a school chooses for offering PIF opportunities.

First-Generation Students and Law School Culture: Professional Identity to Build Belonging

Belonging matters to law student success, and most especially to first-generation law students. The unique culture of law school and the legal industry can be a challenging adjustment even when someone has lawyers in their family. Without knowing any lawyers or having people already in their network to ask for help, first-generation law students can feel like outsiders from day one. (For some insights on the first-gen experience see: https://abaforlawstudents.com/2021/08/25/first-generation-law-student-challenges/ and https://abaforlawstudents.com/2020/01/01/how-to-thrive-as-a-first-generation-law-student/).

For this reason, I have sometimes been skeptical of the premise of professional identity formation that focuses on students moving from an “outsider” in the profession to an “insider” in the profession. As someone who was a first-generation law student myself (although I was not the first in my family to attend college), I know very personally that not having lawyers in my family or lawyers in my network impacted my law school experience in a negative way. From day one of law school, I internalized deeply that I did not belong and, although my law school trained me well on the doctrinal skills, I never once came to a place there where I felt like an “insider.”

It is because of this personal experience, however, and because of the commitment I have to making sure that first-generation students at the law school where I work never feel this same way, that – as much as I can be skeptical about the terminology of PIF – I think PIF can be leveraged to build more belonging. There are a variety of ways a school might use PIF to increase belonging. For example:

Self-Assessment and Industry-Focused Panels: having students complete self-assessment exercises allows them to identify strengths and values that they bring with them to the profession. Taking it a step further, once schools provide an opportunity for students to identify their strengths and values, schools can offer diverse panels of attorneys to demonstrate the varying skillsets that can make someone successful. Providing students with opportunities to know their own strengths and then to see those things in successful practitioners can help them to feel like there is a place in the law for them and who they are matters.
Mentoring: providing thoughtful mentoring opportunities allows students to feel less alone in their journey through law school. Schools can engage alumni, peers, faculty, and staff in formal and informal mentoring programs with students, giving them a broad set of people to whom they can turn for support. Consider, also, having faculty, staff, or alumni identify themselves to students as first-generation students, so that your first-generation cohort has examples of first-generation success stories.
Student Organizations: schools can support student leaders to create a robust community of student engagement and a space where students can connect with each other and feel less alone. Connecting student organizations to a school’s alumni network can be helpful and assisting student organizations with career-related programs can give students more opportunities to understand the variety of paths in the law.

These three things have worked for us as a starting point to increase belonging at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. We start at day one when we dedicate a portion of our Orientation to professional identity. This Orientation program covers the essential eligibility requirements for the practice of law in Ohio and the 26 Lawyering Effectiveness Factors. More importantly, it includes diverse panel speakers who reflect on what these things mean in their practice, along with when and where they developed these skills.

We also require incoming law students to complete the Law Fit assessment, and we use those assessments with them in their meetings with career advisors. In addition, together with my team in Student and Career Services, we have built a one-on-one alumni mentor program and a one-on-one peer mentor program for every first-year student who enrolls with us. Later this Fall, we will offer a Storytelling event to our student body, in partnership with our First-Generation Law Student Association, focusing on things like times when we and they have felt imposter syndrome and why one’s personal story matters.

First-Generation Students and Time: Creating Meaningful Space for Students to Reflect

One of the foundational concepts behind PIF is reflective thinking and opportunities for reflective exercises to help students understand their values, the values of the profession, and the competencies required to be a successful lawyer. Reflection, in turn, requires time and space that are carved out to allow specifically for it. Time is a valuable resource for all students, but especially for first-generation law students. Therefore, PIF plans must be mindful of these time constraints.

There are a lot of reasons why first-generation students might not have time for PIF. For example, if they are working significant hours outside of the law school in legal or especially in non-legal jobs to support themselves, if they face family or personal expectations or obligations (especially from family members or personal connections who are unfamiliar with the legal industry), if they are trying to plan the logistics of taking two months off (unpaid and without benefits) after graduation to study for the bar exam, or if they are de-railed by a financial, health, or other crisis without social capital or resources to support them. In the optional space of Student and Career Services, when we support students with challenges like these, there is sometimes precious little time or energy available to ask students to reflect on how a chosen work or academic experience contributes to their professional identity.

Worse, when I see my first-generation students struggling with time, I worry that PIF will feel to them like optional engagement that is only possible for those law students who are supported by deep family resources or who are not struggling with other life priorities. I also worry whether they will trust me if I ask them to add to their already overflowing plates the additional work required by PIF. Notably, I believe these students are frequently already very self-directed learners, but they are people with clear and important demands on their time that often do not leave room for any optional piece of the law school curriculum.

For this reason – to bring all students along in PIF – schools must be creative about how and when to include PIF in the law school experience, and be respectful of the time constraints students might face, depending on their circumstances.

Bring PIF to Students: one option, of course, is to build into the existing curriculum opportunities for reflection and discussions about professional identity. But, if that won’t work for your school/classroom, schools might consider inviting the career services team to stop by before or after classes to provide handouts or resources that are aligned with related career paths. Schools can emphasize the importance of related programming that is happening outside of the classroom and encourage students to make strategic decisions about which to attend. Schools can include in other required spaces – Orientation, graduation-required courses, student leader trainings – information about building lawyering skills. Schools can encourage students to work with academic advisors, staff, or alumni to create a plan that works for them, and schools can help those advisors, staff, and alumni to have the PIF information they need to be impactful.
Create a PIF-focused Course: changing the curriculum to include a new course is another option, and one that may or may not be a fit for a school. For better or worse, however, we know that in a world impacted by COVID, general student engagement in optional parts of the law school experience is significantly decreased. Add to that the time constraints we know our first-generation students face and we simply cannot wait for students to come to us. As I’ve learned from my colleagues in the undergraduate space, we are responsible for finding ways to go to them. One way to go to them is to create a credit-bearing course that will reward students for doing PIF work while creating a meaningful space for first-generation and other time-strapped students to include the work among their other priorities.

At Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Students and Career Services has seen some movement with bringing PIF to students. For example, my department no longer expects that attendance will be robust at optional career related programs. Instead, we collaborate with student organizations on panel presentations and visit their student organization meetings to connect. We bring handouts and resources to student-run events, instead of requiring them to come to us for the information. We try to model the behavior we are seeking from students by showing up to the programs and panels that they have organized rather than simply demanding they show up at ours. We also leverage our alumni and peer mentor programs to provide resources to students. It is clear to us that peer-to-peer advising among students is at an all-time high, and rather than discourage or limit this connection, we provide information and resources to support it.

Perhaps most importantly, we try to ask students for input on what kinds of activities will help them most when it comes to lawyering skills. Without exception, they prefer activities that require engagement from them, opportunities to become involved in the community through pro bono work, and learning experiences where they connect with others. As a result, we are adjusting our traditional Student and Career Services programming to offer more of these kinds of experiences, and fewer lectures/presentations, while also incorporating reflective coaching questions into our everyday conversations with students.

Conclusion

Supporting first-generation law students to succeed is a critical component of increasing diversity in the legal industry. When PIF is offered thoughtfully and in a way that is mindful of time as a resource, it can be a place where schools can provide that support, not just through efforts focused on belonging, but also efforts focused on financial wellness, building support networks, introductions to professional norms, and academic planning.

If you have any questions or comments about this post, then please feel free to contact me at s.beznoska@csuohio.edu.

Sarah Dylag Beznoska is the Assistant Dean for Student and Career Services at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University.

October 13, 2022 by hami3258

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